The Meaning of Sex Dreams
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The sex dream and looking for the meaning of sex in a dream is something of a pastime for dream interpreters. Sexual content, feelings of love, flirtation, and nocturnal rendezvous are often very explicit in dreams. |
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So, in your sex dream, if you are a man and having sex with a very sexually attractive woman who is obviously wanting you, but you are having trouble "performing", then it might be interpreted as the feminine part of you wanting to become a greater part of your outer life and identity.
You are struggling in the dream to function sexually because you are not comfortable with that side of you and so you do not letting it show up in public.
This would be the symbolism of the sexual difficulty he is experiencing in the dream, and is not foreshadowing that he will soon be impotent!
Unless...he has actually been having some problems in this sector... then the dream could be a night-time re-hashing of the real-life event that is most certainly causing some stress.
Or imagine an elderly woman dreaming that she is making love to a young beautiful man. This sex dream may embarrass and worry her thinking that she secretly desires someone half her age or even more.
The meaning of her sexual dream could simply be that she has only just started (a young man, rather than a middle-aged or even older man in the dream) begun to have a relationship with her masculine self, her animus.
How would she see a manifestation of that in real life? She might have been recently widowed and now, for the first time, she is taking care of bills, making financial and other business decisions, and in some way being more pro-active, in the way we think of men as being pro-active, independent, and entrepreneurial, than she has ever been in the
past.
Or perhaps a woman who has become bitter in life due to failed relationships, and who has been in therapy, working on those matters, has now had a dream where she is making love to a faceless stranger, but the sensation she has is one of deep and tender feelings during the dream.
The symbolic meaning might be that she has finally opened up her inner self to a new relationship in real life, and also has opened her inner self to make possible the merging (sex) of her feminine and masculine self.
Likewise a man who dreams of having sex with a witch, or a woman who in some way is trying to undermine him or hurt him, or who frightens him in the dream, might, in waking life, ask himself what it is he is afraid of regarding the expression of his feminine self in real life.
The fact that he battles with the witch, or is frightened by the woman in bed with him in the dream, may symbolize that he rejects and fears his feminine side in real life, or that he feels if he expresses this nascent side of his personality he will be swallowed by it, suffocated, or in some other way lose himself .
If, after some time, he begins to dream of having good or loving sex with a beautiful woman, rather than with a witch-like creature, it would possibly be symbolizing that he has begun the process of accepting his feminine side and is now more at peace with the expression of that in his real life.
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How often do we dream of sex ?
Studies reveal
significant differences in how men and women
dream about sex . However, when all is said and done, almost everyone at some stage in there life has one. Sex during dreaming is reported as a topic of at least 12% of male dreams and 4% of female dreams. This discrepancy is generally consistent with our waking sex drives, with men doing much more thinking about the topic than women. (It is said that men think about sex far more than 12% of their waking lives, though.) In his book Finding the Meaning in Dreams, G. William Dumhoff reveals some interesting data -
| Gender |
Men |
Women |
| Participating |
93% |
68% |
| Watching |
7% |
32% |
This table indicates that women often separate themselves from what is going on in the dream sexually, whereas men see themselves as participants. This can be significant to understanding why it is more common for men-particularly boys-to have orgasms in the dream state than it is for women. It also reveals the conflict that many women feel about the good-girl/bad-girl taboo.
Dream images that
relate to sex
The question of images and symbols relating to sex in a dream is important. Sexuality is often cloaked in a heavy shroud of secrecy, either through childhood or throughout life. Freud did for sexual content in dreams what Henry Ford did for internal combustion. Suddenly everyone, everywhere had dreams of sex. The following is a partial list of the phallic symbols you may find indexed in a Freudian dream interpretation book:
| Aerosol |
Antenna |
Balloons |
Bats |
| Birds |
Boilers |
Bottles |
Can Openers |
| Cannons |
Cigars |
Cars |
Chalk |
| Cucumbers |
Drills |
French Bread |
Golf Clubs |
| Guns |
Hammers |
Knives |
Neckties |
| Pencils |
Rockets |
Screwdrivers |
Snakes |
| Telescopes |
Umbrellas |
Wrenches |
Zippers |
Not to be left out, women's sexuality was likewise a source of attention and interest for Freud. The following list is far less extensive than the list for male phallic symbols, but almost as diverse:
| Bowls |
Children |
Churches |
Earth |
| Fruit |
Flowers |
Gardens |
Houses |
| Moon |
Oceans |
Ponds |
Suitcases |
| Tunnels |
Urns |
Vases |
Water |
Certain sex dreams are simply
romantic. Boy and girl meet in the dream and find
themselves enjoying one another. This scenario commonly
involves an attractive dream partner and a
generally pleasing environment.
There is no violation of
taboo, except for a sense that perhaps things are moving
a little fast in the nocturnal relationship. Often, the
dreamer has simply acted upon a desire for a
relationship with a particular person. Freud's theory of
wish-fulfillment is a sufficient explanation. Dreams are a rich source of fantasy and can be a way to deal with unfulfilled desires from waking life. Also as dreams are messages from the unconscious mind they can reveal our deep feelings and our true motivations. In particular they can bring to light many repressed sexual desires, our guilty feelings or our unexpressed fears about sex.
If a person has a high degree of repression, the person's fears and anxieties may be expressed through their dreams. Similarly the person's desire for greater fulfillment may be expressed in erotic dreams. If the sexual repression is severe, the dreams may be filled with sexual situations that the person would find shocking, embarrassing, or confusing. In such cases, there is often a big difference between the person's waking sexuality and the sexuality displayed in dreams. The person's day-to-day life may be emotionally sterile and sensually barren, but the dream life is full of eroticism and steamy sexual encounters. By paying attention to your dreams you can learn about your needs and desires and perhaps discover ways to make your life more sensual if necessary. |